Counter Jihad
America's Military Experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria
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- $34.99
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- $34.99
Publisher Description
Counter Jihad is a sweeping account of America's military campaigns in the Islamic world. Revising our understanding of what was once known as the War on Terror, it provides a retrospective on the extraordinary series of conflicts that saw the United States deploy more than two and a half million men and women to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Brian Glyn Williams traces these unfolding wars from their origins in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan through U.S. Central Command's ongoing campaign to "degrade and destroy" the hybrid terrorist group known as ISIS. Williams takes readers on a journey beginning with the 2001 U.S. overthrow of the Taliban, to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, to the unexpected emergence of the notorious ISIS "Caliphate" in the Iraqi lands that the United States once occupied.
Counter Jihad is the first history of America's military operations against radical Islamists, from the Taliban-controlled Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, to the Sunni Triangle of Iraq, to ISIS's headquarters in the deserts of central Syria, giving both generalists and specialists an overview of events that were followed by millions but understood by few. Williams provides the missing historical context for the rise of the terror group ISIS out of the ashes of Saddam Hussein's secular Baathist Iraq, arguing that it is only by carefully exploring the recent past can we understand how this jihadist group came to conquer an area larger than Britain and spread havoc from Syria to Paris to San Bernardino.
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Williams (The Last Warlord), professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, designs a primer for understanding America's current strategic position in the Middle East and the way the U.S. government uses the military for political objectives. He relates that his university students know little to nothing of modern Middle East history, U.S. military operations there, nor who opposes those operations. Williams traces the roots of conflict in the Middle to biblical times, succinctly and comprehensively highlighting the major events of the last 3,000 years that are relevant to understanding the modern Middle East. He then argues that Operation Desert Storm placed the U.S., Al Qaeda, Iraq, and Afghanistan on a collision course leading up to the attack of 9/11 and subsequent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, the book brings the reader logically to the state of U.S. Middle East policy today, including ongoing operations in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as the host of other issues, including the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. Williams manages to articulate complex concepts and history to provide a one-stop synopsis for the knowledgeable reader and a great introduction to the material for laypeople.
